Isaac Newton

Who Was Isaac Newton?

Isaac Newton was a physicist and mathematician who developed the principles of modern physics, including the laws of motion and is credited as one of the great minds of the 17^th century Scientific Revolution. 

Early Life and Family

Isaac Newton was the only son of a prosperous local farmer, also named Isaac Newton, who died three months before he was born. A premature baby born, tiny, and weak, Newton wasn’t expected to survive. When he was 3 years old, his mother, Hannah Ayscough Newton, remarried a well-to-do minister, Barnabas Smith, and went to live with him, leaving young Newton with his maternal grandmother. the young Isaac disliked his stepfather and maintained some enmity towards his mother for marrying him. At age 12, Newton was reunited with his mother after her second husband died. She brought along her three small children from her second marriage. 

Education

From the age of about 12 until he was 17, Newton was educated at The King's School, Grantham which taught Latin and Greek and probably imparted a significant foundation of mathematics. His mother pulled him out of school at age 12. Her plan was to make him a farmer and have him tend the farm. Newton failed miserably, as he found farming monotonous. Newton was soon sent back to King's School to finish his basic education. Perhaps sensing the young man's innate intellectual abilities, his uncle, a graduate of the University of Cambridge's Trinity College, persuaded Newton's mother to have him enter the university.

During his first three years at Cambridge, Newton was taught the standard curriculum but was fascinated with the more advanced science. All his spare time was spent reading from the modern philosophers. In 1665, he discovered the generalized binomial theorem and began to develop a mathematical theory that later became calculus.  

Apple Myth

Between 1665 and 1667, Newton returned home from Trinity College to pursue his private study, as school was closed due to the Great Plague. Legend has it that, at this time, Newton experienced his famous inspiration of gravity with the falling apple. According to this common myth, Newton was sitting under an apple tree when a fruit fell and hit him on the head, inspiring him to suddenly come up with the theory of gravity. While there is no evidence that the apple actually hit Newton on the head, he did see an apple fall from a tree, leading him to wonder why it fell straight down and not at an angle. Consequently, he began exploring the theories of motion and gravity.

Final Years

Toward the end of this life, Newton lived at Cranbury Park, near Winchester, England, with his niece, Catherine (Barton) Conduitt, and her husband, John Conduitt. By this time, Newton had become one of the most famous men in Europe. His scientific discoveries were unchallenged. He also had become wealthy, investing his sizable income wisely and bestowing sizable gifts to charity.  Despite his fame, Newton's life was far from perfect: He never married or made many friends, and in his later years, a combination of pride, insecurity and side trips on peculiar scientific inquiries led even some of his few friends to worry about his mental stability.

Newton’s Death

By the time he reached 80 years of age, Newton was experiencing digestion problems and had to drastically change his diet and mobility. He died on March 31, 1727, at the age of 84.